Ethnocentric feminism

I had a hard time tearing myself away from the computer Wednesday and Thursday mornings to catch the bus downtown to the courthouse, because there was a lively (not to say acrimonious) discussion on a Women’s Studies list I subscribe to, about Female Genital Mutilation. I may have done something myself to contribute to the acrimony. Okay I did. I got annoyed. Repeatedly. (But one is limited to two messages a day, so there was a limit to the damage I could do.)

It started with the (astonishing, I thought) fact that the practice was called ‘circumcision’ – which staggered me because I thought it was apologists for the practice who called it that and that opponents all called it Female Genital Mutilation (which is what it is) as a matter of principle. What could feminists be doing euphemizing the horrible practice? I wondered and wondered, then someone rather gently asked the same question, so I decided to provide backup. (I haven’t been posting to the list much, if at all [I can't remember if I've posted before], because I’m not a women’s studies teacher, so I figured I would just read and be silent; but that’s over.) Backup is useful on that list, I think, because there is a strong current of orthodoxy and orthodoxy-enforcement there, and it looks to me as if more people speak up when other people are speaking up. Certainly that’s how it fell out with this discussion. So I expressed my astonishment in stronger and somewhat ruder terms – and there were other comments – and before long out came the classic retort.

This collection of essays problematizes the “M” for mutilation (which I thought was a critique by now well-entrenched in Women’s Studies) as much as an “E” for excision, given regional differences in the types of procedures performed, and “circumcision” is rejected for the very reasons already named – this is not exactly what occurs (one of the editors suggests “S” for sugeries; another option is “C” for cutting). The book does a very nice job of pointing out that while no one is turning cartwheels about female genital surgeries, and that African women themselves have taken steps to end such practices, this is a far cry from the explicitly colonialist and ethnocentric outrage voiced by Western feminists about practices in “other” countries, as performed precisely on cue on this listserv, according to a script that seems not to have changed in 20 years.

You probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that there was no ‘explicitly colonialist and ethnocentric outrage’ in any of the messages. None of the messages started out by saying ‘Here is my colonialist and ethnocentric outrage’ – or ‘Here is my outrage as a colonialist ethnocentric Western feminist’ – or ‘My colonialist ethnocentric sense of superiority is outraged at the practices in “other” countries.’ No; no one said anything like that; so what was the accusation doing there? The usual. The usual boring, hackneyed, thought-free, self-flattering attempt at intimidation via orthodoxy-deployment and guilt-mongering.

[D]iscussion of female genital surgeries and potential analogues or comparisons with male circumcision should be possible without the accompanying ethnocentric outpouring of feminist outrage. The notion that female genital surgeries are uniquely violating, singularly oppressive to women, primarily about the control of women’s sexuality, a sign of women’s unique powerlessness and violation in Muslim cultures, or the most pressing problem facing the women who undergo it has been *exhaustively documented* as reflective of Western feminist priorities, a fundamentally imperialist feminist analysis that operates on the basis of Western feminist conceptions of gender, sexual hierarchy, and the oppression of women…The result is the characterization of non-Western women as uniquely victimized, exploited, and damaged by “their” men or their barbaric “culture”…

No it isn’t. It isn’t because the ‘outpouring’ (such as it was) wasn’t ‘ethnocentric’; because not all ‘non-Western women’ are subject to FGM, in fact the vast majority of them are not; because the discussion wasn’t about ‘non-Western women’ in general; because the discussion wasn’t about ‘West good non-West bad huh huh huh’ or any other such brainless grunting; because the discussion wasn’t about trying to ‘characterize’ all non-Western women (which would be a bizarre project) but about calling the practice of cutting off and sewing up women’s genitalia a harmful practice. That’s all it was about – yet it was called ethnocentric, colonialist, fundamentally imperialist, and (horror of horrors) twenty years out of date.

So, not for the first time, I learned that it is simply not possible to satirize this kind of thing adequately, because it’s always more fatuous and delusional and above all self-flattering than one can imagine in advance.

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15 Responses to “Ethnocentric feminism”

One would be tempted to pose a purely hypothetical thought-experiment, in which a person holding such despicably stupid views was asked, “If you think it’s so great, why don’t you come over here and I’ll do it to you”, and their response was analysed for traces of hypocrisy.

Please note the words “purely hypothetical thought-experiment” in the above.

‘In response to [X]‘s argument that “some women have chosen to have these procedures done,” why don’t we take a vote on the list to see how many of us would opt to have this done as a way to express our sense of agency?’

‘In response to [X]‘s argument that “some women have chosen to have these procedures done,” why don’t we take a vote on the list to see how many of us would opt to have this done as a way to express our sense of agency?’

Well, that’s very revealing. It is now beyond dispute that the reductive discourse of ‘democracy’ is too steeped in the Western hegemonic discourse to be anything other than a neo-colonial act of conceptual coercion. To imagine that you can address this question by reaching for the imperialist’s self-legitimising trick of voting… It’s a short step from valuing these women’s opinions and hoping they don’t get genitally mutiliated to bombing and enslaving them.

I know, I know, I know, they seem like a parody, don’t they. But yeah, they’re really real. They teach at real universities and all. (Much to Jeremy’s disgust – he pointed out that they shouldn’t be allowed near students. Well quite.)

Mind you…there were also quite a few people opposing them. And some of the people on our side are (cough) quite well known. On their side, not so much. That’s some comfort.

I suppose that – in the end – you can only point out that ‘actually, the west is better, because no matter how imperfect it is, it still allows enough autonomy to the individual over their own lives to enable people like these the opportunity to sit around discussing matters like this, rather than having no choice about these things done to them. But then they are just as hidebound by the traditions of their ideology as those who carry out practices like FGM.

I know ‘FGM’ covers a range of practices, but in what way is it not “primarily about the control of women’s sexuality”?

In fact that whole line is great, with the claim that it has been “*exhaustively documented*”, presumably this is the Sandra Harding style of documentation where a few people claim X, a few more refer to these others claiming X, and finally it becomes an irrefutable fact that X.

Reading that line where they say “*exhaustively documented* as reflective of Western feminist priorities, a fundamentally imperialist feminist analysis” I get the same impression I often have when reading about FGM and other issues affecting women in non-Western countries, the impression that the argument they want to make is ‘yes, you’re right that practice is very bad, but by pointing out that it is bad you reveal that you are in fact an evil cultural imperialist, which is worse’.

“presumably this is the Sandra Harding style of documentation where a few people claim X, a few more refer to these others claiming X, and finally it becomes an irrefutable fact that X.”

Egzactly. Well spotted. That’s one of the most infuriating aspects of the whole thing – the insufferably self-referential insular groupy mutual-flattery-purveying conceit of it. It’s often hard not to gag while reading.

The irony of women’s liberation in western societies is a deeply imbedded form of mental slavery that is hostage to sexist advertising, a hugely profitable cosmetic (from gels to surgery and wire-bras to stilletos) industry, and the widely held notion of progress by “comparison” with the sorry state of women in the third world.

Women are meek, servile, wretched, abused, housemaids….in the other/Eastern societies. In the West, they speak in a masculine tongue/harsh/gravel voice, they are “equal” to men, they work outside the home, they smoke, drink, take drugs, shave their legs and armpits in ritual fashion/fashion ritual, wear make-up their entire lives, wear restrictive underwear, and are made to sell everything from cars to razor blades through their physical nakedness. Now in the globalizing convergence of progress the mysterious separateness of men and women that constituted the most beautiful aspect of humanity is being diluted by Body Shop, an obligingly carbon-neutral guilt free removal of layers of difference and a plastering of organic make-up that will enslave all women as made-up gloss at the altar of those asexual objects, the Gods (Godesses?) of Equality.

Oh right – those women with harsh masculine voices and shaved legs and restrictive underwear who wear make-up from cradle to grave and sell cars – I know those women! In fact there is no other kind of woman in ‘the West’.